6. Brunch

Entrance
*
Brunch
*
Zack's Project

Sylvia is hiding in the bushes outside the main entrance to Samjays. It’s all about the entrance. She wass trying to make a statement to Lindel by staying outside all night, and if she comes back in trying to merge into the wallpaper, what kind of a statement will she be making? She combs her long mousy hair roughly with her hands, she has to look presentable, as if she can survive perfectly well on her own and that she doesn’t need anything whatsoever from the orphanage. Her stomach rumbles in objection. OK, she doesn’t need anything except food. She wishes she’d controlled her temper a little better, well enough to have picked up the apple in the tree house BEFORE storming out. For a 17 year old, Luciel is still as utterly clueless as Elliot. You don’t say to your best friend that you don’t really care whether or not they’re there, even if you don’t actually. That just isn’t what you do.

Content that her hair is as neat as it is ever going to get, Sylvia crawls out from behind the bushes and towards the overly intimidating grandiose entrance to Samjays. She opens the door and walks inside, the wash of central heating is like a welcoming greeting from modern civilisation. Sylvia flips her tag in. Ever member of Samjays has a tag. If the tag is out, the child is out of the building, and vice versa. Lindel is usually very strict about tags, and will already be on the warpath because of last night, and Sylvia doesn’t want to overdo it, she’s made her point. She knows all this because Lindel is sitting in a chair in the corner of the entrance hall facing Sylvia with her arms crossed. Sylvia has made her best attempt to look at the wall, the floor, and anywhere else except Lindel, but not to acknowledge her presence now would be suicide. For one thing it will be obvious that she was avoiding her, and avoiding her is the last thing she wants to do, that would be admitting she’d done something wrong.

Sylvia looks up and faces Lindel, who is still sitting there in the lime green armchair, glaring at her, with her arms crossed firmly across her chest. The scarlet lipstick forced smile she is wearing, perfected through years of public relations work, can’t mask the fact that she is seething with fury. Sylvia smiles her warmest possible smile - pushing it any further could tip Lindel over the edge – and says cheerfully:

“Good morning Ms Lindel, I hope you slept well last night.” Lindel purses her lips but doesn’t say anything. Sylvia beams again and walks past Lindel towards the dining room.

She was ten meters from the door. Upright and confident, anything else and Lindel would be at her like hyenas on a zebra carcass.

Five meters from the door. The wooden floorboards creak underneath her feet.

Two meters from the door.

“Sylvia,” comes Lindel’s strained voice. Elliot obviously wasn’t joking when he said her screaming had been audible from the boys’ rooms. Sylvia turns. Lindel is still facing the door with her back to Sylvia. The sunlight is shining through the glass on the door creating, silhouetting Lindel’s figure. She doesn’t turn round. “Once you’ve finished cleaning up the mud you’ve just tracked in from the grounds, you can clean the rest of the floors in the building, so I suggest you take your shoes off now before you make even more work for yourself.” Sylvia can hear the satisfied whisper of triumph in Lindel’s voice. It says “Lindel – 1, Sylvia – nil”

Sylvia looks at her shoes - Mud. Of course, it was raining the night before, and she was in such a hurry to get away from Luciel she’d forgotten about her shoes. Furious with herself for giving Lindel such an easy excuse to punish her, she removes the culprit mud-caked shoes, forces a smile and tells Lindel she’ll do it as soon she’s had some breakfast, then quickly makes her way into the dining room before Lindel descends from her cloud of triumph, and remembers that she’d said Sylvia isn’t to eat anything.

Lindel - 1, Sylvia - 1.

*

Sylvia skids on the smooth floor. Trying to run in socks on a linoleum floor isn’t one of her smartest ideas, and she is punished for it by losing her balance. She reaches out to grab something to stop herself from falling, unfortunately, that something happens to be Zack, carrying a large pile of toast, who follows her to the floor, as does the toast.

“Argh, Sylvia!” Zack groans as he pulls himself up using the nearby table as support, dusts his trousers, and then picks up the pieces of toast one by one, his long fringe completely masking his face.

“Sorry Zack! I’ll go get you some more toast.” Sylvia says, hoping he isn’t going to hold a grudge against her for the rest of the day. Zack turns over the pieces of toast one by one, scrutinising each side.

“No harm done, they’re still edible.” He says, “You’re lucky I hadn’t put anything on them yet.” He adds, standing up and walking over to the counter where all the spreads are.

“I’ll go get myself some then,” says Sylvia, as she walks over into the kitchen. The kitchen is fairly spacious, but then it has to be. If Sylvia had come in at the correct time for Breakfast, the dining room would be crowded, and over spilling into the kitchen itself. During the evening meals, cooking for fifty children had to be done in here, and then the kitchen never seemed quite big enough. In the centre of the kitchen is a big island with a fake marble counter and in the centre of the island stands a giant toaster. Well, it isn’t really giant, but it fits 8 pieces of toast at once, and anyone who is going to EAT 8 pieces of toast at once has to be a giant in Sylvia’s opinion.

Sylvia makes her way over to the aluminium breadbin and pulls out three sliced of bread. The bread is still hard from the freezer; Zack obviously used the last of the loaf before and only just took the new one out. Sylvia places the bread in the toaster and sets the dial. The good thing about modern tasters is that they don’t take ages to do their job, ten seconds later; Sylvia is out of the kitchen again with three pieces of perfectly done toast on her plate.

Zack is sitting there on the table surrounded by an eclectic collection of spreads with his head down staring straight at his plate. Sylvia sits down opposite him and reaches out for the peanut butter. Zack continues to stare at the plate of toast, Sylvia thinks it best not to disturb him; he might be having a staring competition. Sylvia picks up the knife she collected from the kitchen, drives it into the pot and scoops out what is probably about a third of the contents, and then spreads it in an even, very thick layer across the toast. Zack still hasn’t looked up.

“Zack?” Sylvia mutters. Zack doesn’t answer. Sylvia shrugs and goes back to her toast. The problem with eating toast with so much peanut butter on is that it inevitably ends up going everywhere except where it’s supposed to. Having managed to get most of the stuff around her face, Sylvia gets up to get a serviette from the kitchen, finds that they’ve all been packed away after breakfast, and opts for kitchen roll instead. She comes back into the dining room to find Zack still staring at the pile of toast. Zack isn’t one to suddenly pick up a strange practice like meditating, it isn’t attention grabbing enough. Sylvia walks behind Zack, wiping her face with the rough paper. “Zack?” she coos again, still no answer. “Oi!” she says loudly, then flicks his ear with her thumb and forefinger. Zack grunts, looks up slowly and sees Sylvia standing there with her arms folded.

*

“What?” he says, trailing off, and then yawns. Sylvia continues to stare at him.

“What is up with you this morning, I mean, did you sleep AT ALL?” Sylvia says, sitting down. Zack grunts again, picks up the strawberry jam and spreads most of the contents over the plate, missing the toast completely. Zack sighs, lowers the jam, declares that he needs coffee and stands up to go into the kitchen. Sylvia shrugs and goes back to her toast.

Zack returns a few minutes later. The coffee hasn’t managed to disguise the circles under his eyes as effectively as Lindel’s concealer had disguised hers; however Zack certainly looks more awake now. He sits down, and continues spooning jam onto the toast.

“Busy night?” Sylvia asks offhandedly. Zack looks up and grins at her.

“You heard from Elliot about Lindel having a hissy fit last night?” he asks

“Yep” replies Sylvia, through a mouthful of toast

“well that was mainly because it stopped raining at around 11 last night, and she was trying to persuade someone to go and get you down from the tree house.” Zack smirks again “As if that would have worked… anyway, the point is, it stopped raining. Now, you remember when Lindel was trying to chase you on the roof?”

“Yeah, vaguely,” says Sylvia, then adds, “although I didn’t actually SEE her, I mean then I would have lost them game because she would have found me...” Sylvia trails off. “We’re not still playing the game are we?”

“Well I think if we were I’ve found you by now so it doesn’t really matter.” Says Zack. “Anyway, when Lindel was chasing you on the roof, she was in such a hurry, she didn’t have time to lock the door properly.”

“So you were up there all night then?” Says Sylvia, fiddling with the pot of peanut butter. Zack grins. “And Lindel didn’t notice?”

“That stupid bitch never notices anything if you’re clever about it.” Says Zack, his grin widening.

“Zack?” Says Sylvia

“Yeah?” He replies in his manic grin state. He’s obviously holding something back.

“You’ve got jam on your face.” Says Sylvia flatly.

“Really, where?” says Zack, refusing to take the plunge back down to earth.

“Right here,” says Sylvia, and points to a spot on his left cheekbone. She wipes it with her finger, but it doesn’t come off. Sylvia continues rubbing it, but only succeeds in making Zack look like he’s had an accident with Lindel’s blusher.

“Sylvia,” he says, pulling her arm away, the grin’s almost from ear to ear now. “That’s not jam.”

“Well what is it then?” she says curiously, “It’s not some kind of weird scarlet melanoma is it?”

“It’s paint.” Zack says. Sylvia looks at him quizzically.

“What, you’ve been playing with Elliot’s…” Her eyes widen as it slowly dawns on her. “But I didn’t see anything this morning…” she says confused, but excited.

“I know, I did the other side” Says Zack. The grin is so large now it’s past being from ear to ear now and has probably started to work its was round the back of Zack’s head.

“Lindel is going to be absolutely FURIOUS.” Says Sylvia, trying not to catch Zack’s contagious grin.

“I know,” says Zack, “the best bit is that she won’t notice it until she goes out into town, by which point everyone will have read it?” Sylvia drops her knife and doesn’t bother to pick it up.

“Read it?” she says slowly. Zack grins like the Cheshire cat and leans back on the chair.

“Well, I’m lacking in Elliot’s Artistic talent, and I didn’t want to just copy what you did, so I left a little message for Lindel.” Sylvia’s eyes widen in a mixture of shock, anticipation and delight and she puts her hands over her face.

“What did you write?” Asks Sylvia, taking a deep breath.

“Lindel for President, Long live the dictatorship.” Says Zack. Sylvia gives up trying to hold back and collapses in fits of giggles.